How simple is it to improve your SEO ranking?

When people use a search engine, if they don’t find what they are looking for, then they don’t click to the second page, they amend their search terms. That’s why it’s so important to be on the first page of results and at the very top.

I recently attended a SEO workshop held by Fifteen Digital where I picked up a few tips which can easily be applied to your business and help get you on to that vital first search page.

Initially, it’s important to understand how a search engine ranks your website. It use algorithms which weigh up ‘on page’ and ‘off page’ factors to decide on your ranking. Just to keep everyone on their toes, Google changes this regularly and doesn’t inform anyone, so how do you hit this moving target?

I’m going to concentrate on the ‘on page’ changes that you can make to influence this rank.

Metatags – don’t abuse these, Google is clamping down on ‘keyword stuffing’, so only use words that are highly relevant to the article, remember those bounce rates and use three words max.

Metatag descriptions – as you only have 150 characters, it’s not advisable to go over this limit otherwise your description will not display correctly on the search results page. It’s always best to tailor this description specifically to the page and not simply copy and paste the first line.

Alt Text of Image – Google doesn’t know what an image is unless it’s labelled, use this box to succinctly describe the image.

Have a responsive site – Google penalises any site which can’t be properly displayed on a mobile device.

Client of the month

Our client of the month for August is MummyJobs.co.uk. The online recruitment agent, which aims at getting mums back into business, is going from strength to strength having launched earlier this year. The site now includes franchise, work from home and full time positions, as well as offers, blogs and a forum for mums to get their worries off their chest.